Grit Lab Report

Hi Madeline,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, self-direction, and power.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.

You said your top three talents were verbal, spiritual, and social.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get all as .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Get in the top 25% for my two midterms tomorrow .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Prove that I can do it/ am not dumb .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said I’ll procrastinate out of anxiety or get distracted by my roomates .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I leave dinner, then I’ll go to huntsman and take two practice tests .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Self control .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt when receiving critical feedback, and when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being expectations .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel Loved .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Grit implies a level of obsession with progressing towards your top level goal
That divergent interests can present a unique career opportunity or contribution
That having a pre existing structure/framework make learning a LOT faster
Your cue for a habit is way more important and determinate to your behavior then the reward
Make life into a well structured problem for yourself either using your own skills/intuition or finding external systems to lean on/apply
There is an inner conflict or ambivalence at the root of every obstacle towards a goal
Feedback feels good when it affirms you and it feels bad when it challenges your ego or something you thought you were good at
Optimists see problems as temporary, specific, and in your control
Will power feels bad and eventually fails
The goal is to be accomplished and generous

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Sydney Liu
Madeline brings a thoughtful, positive, and enthusiastic energy to our group. In Grit Lab, we learned that "grit" is all about finding passion and purpose, and Madeline has found hers. Her genuine love for lifting up others is clear in everything she does. She is active in her tight-knit Jewish community, and I've seen firsthand the love that she puts into the relationships she builds. She is a wonderful listener, with a special capacity to build trust and foster open discussion. Her discovery project relates to her goal of promoting progress in her Jewish community. She organized a Challah-bake and talk, where her community can come braid Challah bread and discuss the issue of genetic risk for breast cancer in her community. I came to this event, and it was amazing to see Madeline (or as her friends call her, "Mima") in action. She's so welcoming, friendly, and her energy and laugh is contagious (even though I was the only non-Jewish person there, I felt so welcome!). It's clear how much trust the Jewish community here puts into her, which allows her to create open conversation. And these skills are much needed -- She has shown, time and time again, what "grit" means, working tirelessly and thoughtfully to improving her community’s discourse surrounding the difficult Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She brings a unique perspective, having lived in Israel with many personal ties, and yet, she constantly seeks to hear the other side. She has taken so many steps to go beyond the "black and white" narrative, such reading, listening and speaking with people of diverse backgrounds. Especially now, I think the world needs more people like Madeline. I think she'll go on to do great things!
Jay Brown
Madeline, thank you for all of the great conversations we’ve had over the semester. From our longer team meetings to even short conversations in class, your ideas and perspectives are always so interesting, and I always enjoy hearing them. I think you have so many great insights in life and encourage you to share them with others. You have taught me many things, and I am thankful for the impact you have made. I was happy to see that you started sharing your perspective with others through your discovery project. I’m not surprised that you are willing to take on difficult topics, and I believe you are a great person to lead conversations like those. The results are already showing too, and the impact you are already making is impressive (the pictures in your presentation really showed that). I have complete confidence that you will continue to make an impact in your community going forward, and you should be proud of the changes you will make.
Ojasvi Rana
As impressive as Madeline is, she is just as down to earth. Every group meeting I would hear about the amazing ways Maddy would be connecting and contributing to her communities, and everytime I was astounded by her capacity for generosity, holding space for conversation, and outreach efforts even after the fact. I really admire Madeline’s perseverance in every aspect of her life, despite some ups and downs with health - Madeline remains positive. I think there is no obstacle in life that she couldn’t overcome with her resilience. I can’t wait to see the incredible things Madeline will do in the future. I am very glad to have gotten to know her over the course of this semester and I hope to stay in touch! Speaking of community, Madeline’s courage to pursue her discovery project in a polarised campus environment (Israel/Palestine) speaks volumes of her passion for creating safe and productive spaces of discourse on and off campus. Her integrity shows in the alignment between her values and the execution of her discovery project. For example, Madeline’s efforts to upskill and increase her knowledge through extensive and choicest reading, in addition to the workshop she ran, demonstrates a commitment of the adage ‘practise as you preach’. Madeline is a leader in her community for the same reasons; courage, integrity, commitment. I wish her the best of luck in pursuing the new career avenues that this discovery project opened her eyes to!

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.